This invention relates to a modular printer. The invention relates particularly, but not necessarily exclusively, to a modular commercial printer for effecting high speed, digital, photographic quality, commercial printing. The invention relates specifically to a loading mechanism for loading print media into a modular commercial printer.
In high speed printing, large printing presses are daisy-chained together to print predetermined pages of publications which are then secured together to form the publications. Such printing presses occupy an extremely large volume and are very expensive.
The applicant has also proposed a commercial printer using a number of floor mounted printers having pagewidth print heads. This commercial printer is intended for extremely high production rates such as up to five 180 page documents per second.
To achieve such high production rates, large quantities of consumables need to be readily available for the printers. Thus, once again, such a commercial printer needs to occupy an extremely large volume although the cost of such a printer is considerably lower than equivalent high end, commercial printers which do not use the applicant""s Memjet (Memjet is a trade mark of Silverbrook Research Pty Ltd.) technology.
The applicant has recognised a need for a commercial printer which occupies a smaller volume and which has a lower throughput rate but of the same quality as the applicant""s previously proposed Memjet commercial printer.
According to the invention, there is provided a print media loading mechanism for a printer, the loading mechanism including
a feeding means defining a pair of surface-defining elements which define surfaces which are movable relative to each other in the same direction parallel to a direction of feed of the print media, the feeding means being operable to engage a leading edge of the print media for feeding it towards an exit region of the printer to effect loading of the printer; and
a displacement means for displacing said surface-defining elements in a direction transverse to a direction of feed of the print media, into abutment with each other when loading of the print media is required and for displacing surface-defining elements out of abutment with each other when loading of the print media has been completed.
Each surface-defining element may comprise an endless belt, the belts being arranged in parallel relationship. The belts may be foraminous for enabling drying fluid to circulate through the belts over surfaces of the print media during it printing operation.
Each belt may pass over a pair of spaced rollers, the rollers of one of the belts being in alignment with the rollers of the other of the belts so that rotational axes of said aligned rollers extend parallel to each other and are spaced from each other in said direction transverse to the direction of feed of the print media. More particularly, a roller of each belt may be arranged at an upstream region of the belt with a second roller being arranged at a downstream region of the belt. By xe2x80x9cupstream regionxe2x80x9d is meant that region of the belt closer to an inlet end of the printer and a xe2x80x9cdownstream regionxe2x80x9d of the belt means that region of the belt adjacent an exit region of the printer.
Then, the first rollers of each belt may be arranged in vertically aligned relationship with the second rollers of each belt also being arranged in vertically aligned relationship.
The displacement means may act on the aligned rollers of the belt for urging said aligned rollers of the belts towards each other when print media is to be loaded and for moving said aligned rollers of the belts away from each other when loading has been completed.
The displacement means may include an elongate drive member and a driven member arranged proximate each end of the drive member, the drive member being operable to displace the driven members to effect displacement of said aligned rollers in said direction transverse to the direction of feed of the print media, the driven members being connected by a connector to their associated, aligned rollers. Preferably, an elongate drive member with its associated driven member is arranged on each side of the belt.
The drive member may be a worm screw, each driven member may be a traverser block mounted to be displaceable along the worm screw on rotation of the worm screw and each connector may be a scissors connector connecting each traverser block to its associated, aligned rollers.